BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
SB 1385 (Hancock) - California After School Teacher Pipeline
Program.
Amended: April 10, 2012 Policy Vote: Education 8-0
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: May 24, 2012 Consultant: Jacqueline
Wong-Hernandez
SUSPENSE FILE.
Bill Summary: SB 1385 establishes the California After School
Teacher Pipeline (CASTP) pilot Program for the purpose of
providing financial support to instructors in specified after
school programs who wish to become teachers. The program would
be administered by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing
(CTC).
Fiscal Impact:
Pilot program costs: This bill annually reallocates
$150,000 of existing Proposition 49 professional development
funds to begin the CASTP Program, for the duration of the
program. The CTC estimates that it will incur one-time costs
of $25,000 to develop and administer the grants, and to
produce the first year report. The CTC estimates on-going
program support to be $5,000 per year, with an additional
$5,000 needed in 2018-19 to produce the final report for the
pilot program. The remaining funds would be used to award
grants of up to $3,500 to individual program participants,
as specified; the minimal remaining funding is unlikely to
yield more than 40-50 grant awards.
Cost pressure: To the extent that the CASTP pilot is
successful in recruiting participants, it will likely create
cost pressure to continue and expand the program beyond the
4 pilot sites.
Background: The CTC currently operates the Paraprofessional
Teacher Training Program (PTTP), upon which the program in this
bill is modeled. The PTTP program is a career ladder teacher
recruitment program to help school districts meet local teacher
supply needs by helping their paraeducators become teachers.
PTTP participants are local education agency (LEA) employees
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seeking to become teachers in the local area. Participants work
as instructional aids while they complete subject matter
requirements and continue to receive assistance through the
program while they complete professional preparation
requirements. Participants are required to complete one school
year of classroom instruction in the district or county office
of education for each year they receive assistance through the
program.
The PTTP program is currently subject to categorical program
flexibility that was given to LEAs in 2009, to assist in
absorbing budget reductions. Thus, an LEA may choose to
continue operating its PTTP program or redirect the funding it
received for the program for any other educational purpose as it
deems appropriate.
The After School Education and Safety (ASES) Program Act of
2002, enacted by the initiative measure Proposition 49,
established the ASES Program to serve pupils in kindergarten and
grades 1 to 9, inclusive, at participating public elementary,
middle, junior high, and charter schools. It allocated $550
million for after school programs, as specified in the measure.
Many after school program providers are city, county, or
nonprofit agencies. Although program employees who directly
supervise students must meet the minimum qualifications of an
instructional aide in the sponsoring school district, these
employees are not eligible to participate in the PTTP unless
they are school district employees. This bill would enable after
school program staff who are employees of a school's partner
agencies to participate in a virtually identical program, the
CASTP.
Proposed Law: This bill creates a program similar to PTTP to
assist after school program staff to become teachers in their
local areas. It would be administered by the CTC in the same
manner, and subject to similar governance and restrictions. The
program, the CASTP, would be funded with Proposition 49 / ASES
funds, and would not be subject to categorical flexibility.
Related Legislation: AB 364 (Torlakson, 2009) was virtually
identical to this bill. That bill was held in the Assembly
Appropriations Committee.
Staff Comments: The costs for the CASTP pilot are
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straightforward, because the bill specifies the exact amount of
money to be reallocated ($150,000 annually), indicates that it
will be ASES professional development funds moved to CTC for
administration, and provides details of the program itself. The
CTC administers a virtually identical program, and has a sense
of the cost based on that program.
The potential cost pressure resulting from this bill is less
certain. Typically, education pilot programs are established to
test an idea and determine whether and how to scale it to serve
the state. The intent of this bill is to incentivize and support
after school program professionals to become teachers, in order
to fill a projected need for additional teachers. If the pilot
program is successful in recruiting and retaining participants
in the four CTC-selected sites, there will be pressure to expand
the program to more of the 20,000 after school program
professionals across the state and distribute more grants. There
are currently more than 20,000 after school program
professionals, statewide. If 200 after school professionals
(only one percent of the total number) wished to participate in
the program, it would create cost pressure to quadruple the
number of grants and funding.